ones, for the first time in my life. They’re set in a lovely pale face with rosy cheeks, long blonde lashes, and a laughing mouth framed by golden ringlets. The woman has dimples, and inexplicably the artist has somehow managed to use them to draw out the sparkle in her eyes.
Blue eyes are beautiful.
“This is a new level of low,” says Eshe dryly. “Hanging pictures of another woman in a potential bride’s chambers. Does this woo you? Because it certainly doesn’t woo me.”
Do not presume to know anything about me or my life. Because you know nothing about me. That’s what the Neverseen King had said.
A bride every hundred years.
“It was hidden,” I say absently.
“Inexcusable.”
Eshe keeps prattling, but I tune her out as I study the portrait of the beautiful woman who doubtlessly was the Neverseen King’s wife once upon a time. Why has my heart dropped? Why do I feel like a ship without wind in its sails?
What is wrong with me?
“We need to get out of here.” I turn around too quickly and almost knock into Eshe’s candles. She jumps back to prevent the crash, but only a second later I feel her gaze on my face. Reading too much.
I fix my features into as blank of a mask as I can manage, and dodge around the settee and low table to the window. I yank my rope out of my belt, affix it to its anchor with a quick knot, and try to ignore how my pulse has begun pounding.
“Don’t you dare risk it,” Eshe demands. I ignore her.
Escape.
What does that even mean anymore? If I leave, will Jabir hunt me down? Don’t I have a better chance at freedom surviving this competition? Clearly, winning it is out of the question. The woman in the portrait is dead. I don’t want to be another fresco on a wall. But surviving it . . .
I shove away those thoughts. Obviously this place is even more dangerous for me than working for Jabir. I need to stop overthinking things. For once in my life, I need to throw caution to the wind. I need to run, run, run and never look back.
“I will kill you if you go through that window,” Eshe threatens.
We’ll be killed if we stay here.
I’ve anchored the rope, and I’m about to toss it over the edge of my windowsill when I look out into the silent, flagstone courtyard with its dead fountain and silver-leafed foliage . . . and see something move.
A silent gasp lodges in my throat. I duck behind the wall, taking refuge in the darkness beyond the glow of moonlight.
“What did you see?” Eshe hisses. “Is it going to eat us?”
“Someone is climbing the wall,” I hiss back, heart thumping and mind spinning. “Coming this way. Quick—hide!”
Eshe’s eyes go wide in the candlelight, but it only takes her a second before she snuffs both wicks with a twist of her fingers and ducks into the darkness. I unsheathe two knives and slip behind the curtain, just on the edge so I am nearly invisible, but have a clear view of the window and anyone who might enter. I draw my scarf up to cover my nose and mouth.
And then I wait.
One, two, three.
A faint scuff sounds from outside the window. Whoever is climbing is very, very quiet—but not completely silent. More scuffs pepper the silence, and once there’s a soft gasp and a pebble falling to the ground.
Louder.
He’s getting closer.
Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen.
What is this? Another fool competition of the Neverseen King? Some trick he’s pulling out of his sleeve after scaring the daylights out of me with his reaction to Mahja?
Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen.
Hands grasp the sill. My breathing stops. I dare not move.
Wild curls, turned silver from the moonlight, come into view. It’s a man who hoists himself up, forearms straining, until he drops into a crouch on my floor. He’s tall, but a cloak obscures his other features.
I take one step closer, knife upraised.
Twenty-two, twenty-three.
Then, to my shock, his hands go up as though in surrender. A familiar voice whispers through the air between us, though he is turned away from me.
“I know you’re there, Nadira. Don’t kill me.”
My knife freezes. Shock pulses in one wave after another through my blood, rendering my tongue useless for several long seconds until I can finally manage a croaking, “Kolb?”
He turns at the sound of my voice. Moonlight illuminates half of his familiar, boyish face, and half of a ridiculous, crooked grin as our eyes lock.
“What are you doing here?” I gasp.
He crosses the distance between us, dodges around my knife, and pulls me into a completely unexpected embrace. I stiffen, my fist clenching around the hilt of my blade. Tears prick the corners of my eyes. I’m thunderstruck.
Kolb came for me.
We have been friends for years, sometimes kissing, and had tried to escape together that one fateful time, but I’d never thought his feelings for me went this deep. We’d been solaces for each other in the midst of terrible lives, but this . . . This is devotion. How did he even find me? To track me down like this, to face the wrath of the Neverseen King, to brave the danger of this palace—for me?
I lower my knife, sag into his arms with a half sob.
“Are you alright?” he asks.
I’m wonderful. “I’m alright.”
“Good,” he says, flashes me another of his grins—and ducks his head to kiss me.
Moved as I am, I haven’t forgotten Eshe, who is definitely watching. I step out of his arms quickly, barely dodging his kiss, and begin scratching my shoulder even though it doesn’t itch. My face is hot. “How did you find me? Are you here to help us escape? I’ve been trying to form a plan for days, but—”
“Actually,” he says, shuffling his feet and rubbing his neck, “I’m here to tell you to win the competition.”
My world of warmth and sunshine, of promises and love and devotion, evaporates into dust. I shake my head. “What?”
“You need to win this, Nadira, and I know you can.”
I’m still shaking my head, as if that will help me make heads or tails of this nonsense. My voice comes out far too small. “How do you even know about the competition? And you want me to marry the Neverseen King?”
He only nods.
I look away from him, swallowing heavily. The moon outside enraptures my gaze until my thoughts consume me so deeply that I’m not seeing it at all.
I’m a fool. I knew Kolb didn’t love me. But at the first, tiniest indication that he did, I let myself believe it. I let my vision cloud; I doubted my intuition. I let myself hope.
How wrong I was, to believe for even a second that someone besides Eshe was devoted to me! It’s this flaw of mine that has already been making me think foolish thoughts about the Neverseen King, and now it’s rearing its ugly head with even more ridiculous thoughts about Kolb.
I won’t be blinded. I won’t be a fool.
I hate this weakness.
But I won’t be weak anymore. Enough is enough. I won’t play the fool with Kolb for another instant. I take one step back from him, putting distance between myself, sheathe my knife, and cross my arms over my chest.
“How did you find me?” I demand.
He doesn’t meet my eye, glancing down at his bare feet. How he managed to scale the wall without a rope is beyond me, but that’s always been Kolb.
“Jabir found you,” he says.
I sink two inches into the floor. “What?”
“He knows you’re here.”
“How?”
“I don’t know!” he throws up his hands in frustration and starts pacing. He could never sit still for more than thirty seconds. “But he knows you’re here in the palace, that you’re competing for the hand of the Neverseen King.”
I give a rueful snort. He always finds me. Apparently my insistence to the sultan that he shouldn’t underestimate Jabir was fair. That’s another thing I’m a fool for—believing for even a second that I could get away from Jabir. “I suppose he sent you because he wants me back?”
Maybe Kolb suggesting I win is actually his way of trying to protect me from Jabir. Maybe—
“He sent me to tell you to win.”
Apparently I still haven’t learned my lesson. I grit my teeth. “Why?”
At this, Kolb walks past me and plops down cross-legged on the settee. “Our people are fed up, Nadira. The incense tariffs have gone up, and with Idamea’s port city soon to finish, they’ll capture much of the spice trade from us. Prices keep going up. People are starving. Our sultan never shows his face, isn’t trying to repair our trade relationship with other kingdoms—he isn’t doing anything to help us. This is our chance. Our chance to infiltrate his domain so we can overthrow him and choose a new sultan.”
“Watch your seditious tongue. These walls have ears.”
At that, he clamps his mouth shut and looks around the darkness warily. He’s lucky I can sense that the Neverseen King isn’t here, but he doesn’t need to know that.
“So you want me to get married,” I say.
He nods vigorously. I try to stop my gut from sinking.
“You can learn his weaknesses, his secrets,” he says, lowering his voice until I can only barely discern what he is saying.
“You want me to win the competition, marry the Neverseen King, and then betray him,” I say slowly. I choose not to articulate what I’m thinking: And Jabir wants to continue using me as his pawn.
Kolb nods.
My next words are foolishly bitter, but I have to speak them anyway. “Do you intend to keep crawling through windows and drains to kiss me?”
He ducks his head. So he’s not completely shameless. “I’ve been doing it this long,” he says at last with a sad shrug. “But this opportunity is too good to pass up. I know you can win.”
“I don’t want to win. I want to get out of here.”
“You cannot leave! Not when you could change everything for us, for our people. Don’t you see that you, Nadira, are our salvation?”
I don’t deign to respond to that. He should know better than to believe those words. As long as Jabir has his hold on me, I cannot save anything.
“Does everyone know about the competition?” I ask instead.
He shakes his head. “No one knows. It’s a secret.”
But somehow, Jabir knows. Unease prickles down my spine.
“How did you get in?”
“Oh! That was the easy part. This apparently breaks down djinn magic, so I was able to get in.” He fishes in the pockets of his tattered clothes and pulls out—
—a golden egg studded with rubies, emeralds, and one large diamond.
My focus narrows to the small but priceless treasure in his dirty palm. My voice drops to a lethal octave. “Where did you get that?”
His gaze sharpens at my tone. “You’ve seen it before. Has Jabir made you use it too?”
Jabir. Jabir. Jabir.
There’s something obvious here that I’m not understanding. Something my blindsided brain is not comprehending. Why hasn’t Jabir given the artifact to whoever ordered it stolen?
Was Jabir the one who wanted the egg in the first place?
“It breaks down magic?” I ask, watching the moonlight catch on the refractive surface of its jewels.
“It works much better than you’d think. When Jabir said the first errand he wanted me to do was to break into the palace to speak to you, I thought I was dead. Everyone knows you don’t just sneak into the Neverseen King’s palace. I was terrified you were right to be nervous about the deal I made with Jabir. I don’t want my sister to be left alone without anyone to take care of her once she gets better. But no, I didn’t have any trouble getting in. I’m glad for it.”
Nausea hits my gut at the mention of his sister. His dead sister.
He doesn’t know.
I should tell him. He needs to disentangle himself from Jabir and run as far away as he can. But my throat closes, my stomach roiling, and I can do nothing but stand here.
Kolb unfolds his long legs and gets up off the settee. Numbly, I think I’ll have to clean off the dirt he leaves behind to keep his visit from being discovered. “I have to go,” he says, coming toward me as though for another hug. Or perhaps a kiss.
I clench my jaw and tighten my arms across my chest. “Then go.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to do something if I didn’t think it was for the best,” he says softly, stopping before me, but not touching me. I nod once, but between what feels like his betrayal and the knowledge I cannot bring myself to share, I refuse to soften toward him. He looks like he wishes to reach out to me. Please don’t. Please don’t. Please don’t.
He turns, and in a flurry of tattered cloak, drops himself out of the window, swallowed up by night and that eerie silence.
“What was that?” Eshe whispers from beneath the bed. Sand and stars, why did she pick the worst hiding spot in the entire room?
A nightmare, I want to snap back. In three paces, I’ve crossed the distance to the window. The stone ledge is cool beneath my fingers as I lean out and find the gangly shadow slipping through the courtyard.
He knows how to get out of here without getting killed.
Resolve hardens in my breast as I grit my teeth. I grab the rope that I left pooled on the floor, wind the end around my hand, and hop onto the window ledge. “Be right back,” I say to Eshe.
“Nadira!”
I pull my hood low and start scaling the wall. My heart pounds the entire way down.
